Joseph Stella's early ink self-portrait reflects the young artist's commitment to his craft. Depicting himself at his easel with a visor to sharpen his focus, Stella demonstrates a skillful use of cross-hatching and a nuanced handling of modeling from dark to light, reminiscent of Rembrandt. Although Stella had intended to follow his older brother-who had come earlier to the United States-into medicine, he soon enrolled in art school, studying at the Art Students League and at the New York School of Art with William Merritt Chase. The confidence that Stella exudes in his self-portrait may well have resulted from the admiration his teacher and classmates expressed for his draftsmanship. In 1901 Chase praised one of Stella's portrait studies with the assertion, "Manet couldn't have done it better!" Stella's fellow students applauded his accomplishment.

In adhering to the demands of the tradition-laden technique of metalpoint in the early twentieth century, as exemplified in this mature self-portrait, Joseph Stella compared himself to a tree, digging its "roots obstinately, stubbornly" into the medium, imagery developed here. The strong presence of a tree trunk, with a protruding branch that frames the artist's head, testifies to Stella's interest in the natural world. His self-portraiture demonstrates the confidence of an artist able to merge the modern with the traditional; the mystical with the observed; and the symbolic power of medium, technique, and image. Describing his commitment to capturing inspiration in his images, Stella reflected: "The greatest effort of the artist is to catch and render permanent (materialize) that blissful moment (inspiration) of his when he sees things out of normal proportion, elevated and spiritualized, appearing new, as seen for the first time."

America's leading futurist artist, Joseph Stella created monumental abstract paintings characterized by dramatic contrasts of light and color, thrusting diagonals, and dynamic movement. But this self-portrait focuses instead on self-revelation, reflecting the contradictions of Stella's artistic and personal life. Not known to be an introspective person, the Italian-born artist studied his own image more intensely as he grew older and more reclusive. Although the pose here recalls the classical Renaissance profiles he admired, the intensity and complexity of the image belie this tradition. Touches of red on the lips, eyelid, nose, and cheek are unsettling. The turbulent pattern and acrid yellow splotches in the background reinforce the sense of anxiety. Yet the concentration of his gaze, the flare of his nostril, and the set of his lips convey the spirit of a headstrong individual who persists despite emotional turmoil.